Sam chuckled. “If you don’t dicker a little bit, it looks funny. Those are the guys they remember. And there’s paperwork, you know. I almost gave him the wrong I.D. This thing’s a bad little mother, though.” He punched down on the accelerator, throwing Jackson off-balance in the back seat.
The car rumbled past boarded-up storefronts with dilapidated signs advertising last-ditch sales. The streets were deserted, save for the occasional sad sack trudging seemingly nowhere. The boxy brick buildings along the road gave off the air of some long-dead civilization, as if Sam had accidentally taken a wrong turn into a massive archeological dig. Billy, sitting in the front passenger seat, craned his neck skyward, looking for evidence of downtown in the distance. He’d been to Stockton before, remembered a bustling commercial district, the colorful S&L Society Bank building curling elegantly around the corner of Main Street. He wondered if this lousy economy had swept it all away.
They found another used car lot, and Billy and Jackson decided to both go in. As long as they acted like they didn’t know each other, who would ever be suspicious? Billy chose a Chevelle with a blue-and-white racing stripe. Jackson scored another Buick, an Electra this time. They both paid with cash. The three men then drove separately to a Denny’s, where they left their cars running, climbed out, and huddled together in the back of the parking lot.
Billy gave his prepared speech. “Just a reminder. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t care if your mama needs emergency surgery or you have inside dope on a hot stock. I’m taking the risk here. You put me at risk by calling me or coming to find me. We’re all agreed?”
“A couple of weeks,” Sam said.
A gold Camaro pulled into a space opposite them, jerked to a stop. A young woman with hair cropped to look like an old-fashioned leather football helmet unfolded herself. A three-inch-long metal cylinder fell from her lap and bounced on the pavement. She vigorously kicked it under the adjacent car. Goal! The three men watched as she adjusted her skirt: slender legs, decent rack—possibly no bra. She spun around but didn’t notice them. She had a flat, button nose. Too-small eyes. A smattering of brown freckles. She jerked her head and sniffed hard. Billy couldn’t take his eyes off her. Not because she was a looker—she wasn’t—but because he recognized her. Or thought he did. Had he bagged a girl in Stockton? A large drop of sweat fell from the woman’s nose. It hit the ground and sprayed like a tiny lawn sprinkler. She didn’t notice that, either. She sniffed again, the little helmet of hair shaking like gelatin, and strode into the restaurant. Billy’s eyes stayed on the ground. It wasn’t sweat. It was a drop of blood.
“Those were your words, man.”
Billy looked up. “What?”
“You said you’d have our money in two weeks.”
“Yeah, right. But don’t count the days. It could be three weeks. It could be a month. All right? This is an art, not a science.”
“We got it. Don’t worry.” Jackson put his hand out, and Billy shook it.
Sam extended his hand too, but when Billy reached for it, Sam pulled it away and playfully patted Billy’s face. “Just remember that we can find you,” he said, flashing a Joe Cool smile.
Billy returned the grin. He understood that the macho dance was necessary in situations like this. “I think we understand each other.” He thumped Sam’s arm—“Go the speed limit,” he said—and ducked into his new wheels. He backed out of the parking slot and rolled toward the exit. As he passed the front window of the restaurant he took a long look at the waiting area. He didn’t see the woman. They must have seated her already. He swung the Chevelle into traffic and headed south. He watched his rear-view mirror until he saw the Electra bound onto the street and turn in the opposite direction, and then the Datsun. He looked at his watch. Should he hang out at a bar or get a motel room? He figured the caravan from Spritle’s was about an hour behind them, so his answering service should have a message from Tori at any time. He decided on a room. After talking to Tori, he’d have to wait three hours while he pretended to drive from Bakersfield to Stockton. He might as well be comfortable; he’d rather watch TV or take a nap than chug beers on a barstool.
Inevitably, he compromised. He decided he would have a couple of pops at a place called Ware’s he’d spotted from the road, phone his service, call Tori back, and then take a room at the Motel 6 next door to wait out the fake drive. He walked into the bar and stood, squinting, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. It was a dump, which was what he wanted. He sat at the bar, ordered a beer. He swiveled on the stool so he could survey the place. Only a handful of customers, mostly pensioners. The waitress, a Mexican girl who couldn’t possibly be old enough to drink, was sitting in a booth with a newspaper, working on the word jumble.
Billy’s bladder rebelled after he finished off the third beer. He dropped from the stool and walked to the back. A sign directed him to the second floor. The old wooden steps barked with every step, and he tried to lessen the sound by putting his heel down first and rolling forward. Now the stairs moaned. The bathroom was at the top, tucked into the wall. He turned the doorknob—locked. Some old drunk was already in there. The smell hit him then, and he stepped back. He put a hand to his nose to try to squeeze off the receptors. The guy was going to be in there a while—or forever. Billy went around the corner, where he found a narrow, dark hallway. Decades-old photographs of men raising steins, their arms around one another. Billy couldn’t tell if the pictures had been taken in this bar. Near the end of the hall, a door on the right stood partially open. Billy peeked into an office, no doubt belonging to the owner. A short desk, the desktop tidy, pushed against the window. The only light issued from a lamp out of sight behind the door. Billy stepped inside, glanced behind the door. There didn’t seem to be anything here worthy of his attention. Maybe he’d find a gun or some cash in one of the desk drawers, but he wasn’t about to start rifling the place. There was, however, something that did catch his interest: a small room at the side—a private bathroom. He closed the door behind him, flipped up the toilet lid, and let loose. He shuddered, and dropped his head in satisfaction.
Stepping back into the hallway, he saw the door at the far end whisper shut. His view of the room behind the closing door lasted less than a second, a blur of shape and color, but he knew exactly what was going on in there.
He felt the moisture in his mouth. Dear God, he was salivating. He stepped to the door, listened. Nothing. Not a sound. But he knew.
He descended the stairs slowly, considering his options. He should just finish his beer and go. That was the best of his choices, and of course it was off the table. You didn’t walk away from a sure thing. Back on his stool, he waved to get the bartender’s attention.
“How do I get in on the game upstairs?”
The bartender, a big, middle-aged man with a fu manchu mustache, gave him a sidelong glance and the expected response. “The what?”
“Come on, the game.”
“Sorry. Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Billy stood again and strode out the door. He unlocked the trunk of the car and grabbed the bag filled with the money. He pulled a handful of cash out, counted off five thousand dollars, put what remained back in the bag, and shut the trunk. He found a rubber band in the glove compartment and bound up the five grand. Back in the bar, he returned to his seat and waved the bartender over. He smiled, his guy’s guy smile. He leaned in, confidential-like. “I know you can tell I’m not a cop. I’m just looking for a diversion.” He flashed the roll of bills. “Maybe you can check upstairs. You might be surprised at what you find.”
The barkeep sucked on his tongue. Billy could tell the man didn’t want this aggravation. He almost felt bad for him. “All right, you’re not a cop,” the bartender said. “So who are you?”
Billy broke a Benjamin free and stuffed it in the man shirt pocket. “I’m a man on a lucky streak.”
The bartender fingered the hundred. He removed it from his shirt and made it disappear in his fist. He walked around the bar without a word and climbed the stairs. A minute later Billy noticed the bartender and another man, a fat guy in a faded white button-down shirt and a skinny black tie, gazing down at him. The fat guy’s hair had to be a toupee. Off the shelf. Billy lifted his beer, silently toasted them, took a swig.
The bartender rematerialized behind the bar and gave Billy the nod. Billy gulped the last of his beer and eased up the stairs. As he reached the door at the end of the hallway and raised his hand to knock, it jerked open. A large, round man with a babyish face filled the doorway. Not the same fat man who had checked him out with the bartender. A thundercloud of smoke hovered around him, leaking into the hall.
“Show me what you’ve got,” the baby said.
Billy handed him the roll of bills, and the man riffled through it and handed it back. He nodded him inside, stepped aside.
It was a surprisingly big room, with at least half a dozen tables going and wait staff in penguin outfits flitting about. Billy suddenly wondered if this was a syndicate operation. Did they have the mob in Stockton? He wouldn’t have thought so. He scanned the place. It didn’t seem to fit the dimensions of the rest of the building. Mindlessly, Billy guessed it had been added on. He imagined the room hanging from the back of the building, held up by two rickety ten-foot-tall wooden beams. The poker table he’d first noticed from the hall loomed in his path. Five men in various stages of distress and exhaustion surrounded it, slumped forward over their cards. They looked like they’d been there since last night, and they probably had. Billy’s eyes jumped to the next table. Blackjack. He felt himself start to grin. You expected poker in the back room of a bar, but they were playing blackjack here, too. Billy bypassed the poker table. Who could resist blackjack? It wasn’t you against the vagaries of the cards. Not really. It was you against the dealer. Like two boxers going fifteen rounds. It was about whether you had the nerve to discover the weakness when you couldn’t see it, whether you had the courage to go the distance.
Billy prided himself on his courage and nerve. He ordered a Scotch from a passing waiter, found a table with an open spot, and sat. He ran a hand over the green felt. The dealer was tall and thin. Female. She smiled down at him, a smile full of promise. She wore a button-down white shirt and black slacks, basically the same outfit Jillian wore the first time he laid eyes on her. But with this dealer, he couldn’t tell what kind of body she had under her clothes. She could be delectably svelte. She could be pudding. He pulled out two hundred-dollar bills and handed them over. She pushed a small stack of chips at him. Cards started to fall in front of him. The game was on.
Focus—concentration—overcame him at once. There was only the ocean in his ears, numbers and colors before his eyes. He held a card to his forehead and closed his eyes, like Carson doing Carnac the Magnificent. “Hit me,” he said.
She hit him. He grimaced. A seven and a five.
“Hit me,” he said again.
She dropped another card on him. A king. Bust.
He glanced up at the dealer, whose face remained utterly blank. Well played, he thought. He rolled his neck. He felt good. The power was with him, he could tell. He should be dead, after all. That trucker earlier today had them right where he wanted them. They were within moments of hurtling off the road, down into the valley below, gone forever. But Fate—and Inspiration—had been with him. And so here he was.
“What’s your name?” he asked the dealer.
“Jane.”
Jane. Good name for a dealer. Plain. Unadorned. Professional. She fit her name: she dealt without flair, but with obvious skill. The fingers grasped and clutched the cards with precision; the cards didn’t seem to bend at all, as if they were made of wood. He held at eighteen, lost to twenty.
A pimply teenager showed up with his drink. Billy pressed a chip on him, downed the Scotch in one swig. He would have preferred to have Jane deal by hand. He didn’t trust the mechanical, eight-deck shoe, believed it could be rigged. He thought about moving over to the poker table. Jane smiled at Billy, and he returned it, shaking off his paranoia. She dropped a card in front of him, and he scooped it. He suspected she was flirting with him.
He immediately felt his luck change. Two hands later, he had sixteen, no-man’s land. Jane had a king showing, a brightly colored illustration: a pointy gold crown pressed down on a square, Dick Tracy-like head. He was paying close attention to the distribution of cards, focusing so hard he was getting a headache. Looking at that king, at the bold colors in his robes, he saw the future as plainly as the cards in front of him; he was going to take a low number next but not as low as the dealer. There wouldn’t be another picture card in this game.
Confidence surged through him. Before the game he’d asked for more chips, and for the first time he saw Jane’s expression change when he told her how much he wanted. She asked him if he was sure, which made him smile. He was always sure. He was always positive.
She put another card in front of him. A jack. Holding a dagger.
The burning started as the dealer reshuffled the deck. Billy’s brain felt like it was on fire, like it was going to burn up and fall out his ears in ashes. But the cards kept coming, and the chips kept moving. He downed another Scotch. He felt the breath of men behind him, smoke hitting him in the back of the head. They were urging him on, these men. He was winning! His prognostication had simply gotten ahead of itself, that was all. Reality had to catch up to the rapid-fire workings of his brain. He would leave these saps with nothing!
Drink and exhaustion hit him all at once. He reeled from the table, stumbling. He crashed to the floor, felt himself bounce. Parquet flooring, like the Boston Garden. Nice. He burped up something, drooled it onto the floor in a long string. Two men, one on each side, grabbed him and lifted him up. They began to march him toward the door.
“What the hell is this?” Billy said, squirming, trying to drag his feet. “You’re throwing me out? Afraid I’m going to break the bank?” He chuckled at the thought of it: a second bank robbery in one day.
One of the men plowed a hand into Billy’s back pocket, pulled out his wallet. The man removed all of the bills and counted them. Eighteen dollars.
“This is your life-insurance premium,” the man said. “It’s good for the next sixty seconds. If you’re still here after that, we’re going kick your head in.”
The man slapped the empty wallet into Billy’s chest. Billy tried to shake the gauze away from his eyes. He looked around the room: everyone was looking at him, waiting to see what he would do.
He ran a hand through his hair, cracked his neck. He turned and walked out, thumping into the doorframe on the way. The door clicked shut behind him. He felt his pockets. They’d taken all five thousand off him. Ripped him off like he was nothing and nobody. Of course they did: they could tell he was about to go on a roll, that this nobody hick tourist passing through town was about to make them all look like fools. He thought about getting his gun out of the car and coming back. Had he disposed of the gun yet? He couldn’t remember.
He hurried down the stairs and into the night. He opened the Chevelle’s trunk, pulled a handful of cash out of the bag—way more than five grand this time—and stuffed it down his pants. That was no good. He looked like Johnny Wadd. And he could barely walk. He removed the money, put it back in the bag and closed the trunk. He looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He considered finding a cop, telling him he’d been robbed, but he immediately thought better of it. He was five-grand lighter, a victim of the fucking Stockton mob, but he had to look on the bright side. He could’ve had a lot more on him, the entire amount from the bank, however much that was. Maybe he’d take the whole five G’s out of Sam’s end. Sam would never know. Billy walked over to the Motel 6 and into the lobby. Low ceiling, brown walls. The top of the counter was scuffed and chi
pped from a million keys being pushed across it. He banged on the bell, and when the clerk showed his pasty face, Billy asked for a room away from the noise.
“Noise?”
“From the drunks coming out of the bar. From the cars on the street.”
“Oh, right.”
The man gave Billy the best room in the place, way in the back, on the other side from the bar. Billy tossed the key onto the dresser and stepped into the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet, he smoked a cigarette and thought of Wilson. He should track that S.O.B. down, he decided. Get his and Becky’s fair share of the Seattle job—plus twelve years of interest. In his grief he’d let it go, thinking of it as blood money, like accepting it would be payment for Becky’s death. But money was money—he knew that. Whether he had the Seattle cash or not, Becky was dead. Long dead. So dead, if he were honest with himself, he had trouble remembering her. What she was really like. He could picture her—and he did it all the time—but was it the snapshots on the wall he was seeing in his mind? He couldn’t hear her laugh anymore. He probably wouldn’t recognize her voice if she dialed him up from the Great Beyond. He flushed the toilet, stubbed out the cigarette, and washed his hands, gazing at himself in the mirror. He’d started to notice his age not too long ago: the dark gullies under his eyes, the explosion of tiny lines. What would Becky have looked like at forty? Would he still be attracted to her? Would they still be doing it every night? Billy turned away from the mirror. He should get married again, he thought. Let the past stay in the past where it belonged. It’d be nice to have someone in the house who knew how to properly cook a meal and iron a shirt. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, shook his head, and walked out of the bathroom. He dropped down on the bed without even deciding to do so.
As he lay flat on his back, his muscles seemed to unclench as one. His brain stuttered, like a bad ignition switch. He imagined all the people who’d been on this bed over the years, all the sweaty couples having sex, the lonely traveling salesmen watching the TV alone, the drunks too whacked out or embarrassed to go home to their wives. Their faces, indistinct and without character, swirled around him. Impending sleep pressed down on Billy’s head. He wasn’t sure he could arrest it even if he wanted to. This was what his father had always been like after coming home from work. Bone weary, he’d say. Big Bill he could picture as clear as day. The old man couldn’t wait to retire. Couldn’t wait to sit around for a living.
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